The victim in the Steubenville rape case, known in most (but not all) of the media coverage of the case as "Jane Doe", was taught by her rapists, her then-friends and much of her hometown that she doesn't matter. She didn't matter to the boys who made use of her unconscious body to satisfy their own sexual urges and desire for power; she didn't matter to her friends who sided with those boys; and she didn't matter to the football boosters in her hometown, who were unwilling to see their pride in the team tarnished by the actions of two of its players.

She learned that a lot of people around her, including some in positions of power, thought that the futures of her rapists were more important than what they'd done to her and what she'd have to learn to live with. And after the verdict that found the boys delinquent (Ohio juvenile court-speak for "guilty of a felony"), if she was unfortunate enough to be paying attention to the way some news organizations presented the verdict, she learned that the locals were not alone in that judgment.

It wasn't enough that ABC aired a rosy profile of one of the now-convicted rapists before the trial, emphasizing his happy mood the night of the rape and his football career. Instead, CNN anchor Candy Crowley and correspondent Poppy Harlow talked about how hard it was to watch the convicted rapists break into tears, given their good grades and, again, their football-playing prowess. NBC's Ron Allen spoke eloquently about the boys' "dreams" of college and, again, their football skills now wasted by their convictions. And, of course, the AP, USA Today and Yahoo stories about the convictions all led off with how the victim in the case – of whom the boys were convicted of raping – was reportedly drunk on the night in question. The convicted rapists' intoxication, or lack thereof, was not, apparently, editorially important.

Generally speaking, the news media don't lament the theretofore bright futures of young men (or women) convicted of other violent crimes, such as the killing of girlfriends or executing down-on-their-luck job-hunters. They don't grieve at the loss of college football careers for kids convicted of drug-related offenses, or empathize with would-be murderers who break down in tears when faced with consequences for the crimes they committed. They don't assign deeper motivations to the tears of men and women who must now contend with the most openly broken part of the American criminal justice system – incarceration – to which around 2.2 million Americans are currently consigned (at 730 prisoners per 100,000 citizens, the highest rate of imprisonment in the world) and which is widely recognized as minimally rehabilitative and maximally punitive.

But rape isn't any other crime in America, or elsewhere. Statistics show that every 100 rapes in America results in only five felony convictions. It's the only crime in which the level of intoxication of the victim is considered by some, like the convicted rapists' lawyers and some in the media, to be mitigating evidence. It's the only crime in which the perceived attractiveness of the perpetrators to other people or the victim is considered relevant information. It's the only one in which we're encouraged to sympathize with why perpetrators picked their victims – their supposed drunkenness, their clothes, their reputations – and then blame the victims for making themselves attractive targets.

And it's probably the only crime these two boys could have committed and gotten international coverage for their football prowess and the supposed harm that the victim – not the two rapists – did to their team. But when everyone is done being sympathetic to two convicted rapists whose own bad decisions – not those of the victim, or those made within the criminal justice system – put three promising young lives on very different paths than the ones on which they started that terrible night, maybe then they can give some thought to the young girl. It is she, whose body was violated by two boys and hundreds of thousands of strangers, who has to walk into a school and among residents of a town where some people want her not just shamed for her own sexual assault but dead for reporting it. For her, the few memories of that night but the many of its extended aftermath cannot be erased.

And maybe, then, everyone could spare some sympathy for the next girl, and the one after that – and all the victims of sexual assault who are created at an average of one every two minutes in America. Because it's only by reversing who automatically qualifies for society's sympathy that we can even start to make an impression on the needs of those who really deserve our empathy and some sort of justice.

Gethin Chamberlain: A shocking series of brutal attacks has led to a national debate on sexual violence. The Observer asked a group of young men in Goa for their views. The talk revealed a disturbing mindset